Page 49 - TheHopiIndians

MESA FOLK OF HOPILAND 43
That Honi's messages are worth hearing is wit
nessed by the following announcement of the New
Fire ceremony. Honi, standing on the housetop at
sun-up, intones:
All people awake, open your eyes, arise,
Become children of light, vigorous, active, sprightly;
Hasten, Clouds, from the four world-quarters.
Come, Snow, in plenty, that water may abound when
summer appears.
Come, Ice, and cover the fields that after planting,
they may yield abundantly.
Let all hearts be glad.
The Wuwutchimtu will assemble in four days.
They will encircle the villages, dancing and singing.
Let the women be ready to pour water upon them
That moisture may come in plenty and all shall re
joice.

This is a good example of the poetry of the Hopi
which, in the kachina songs, is of no low degree of
artistic expression.
The Hopi use the world for a dial and the sun for
the clock-hand. The sun-priest from his observatory
on a point of the mesa watches the luminary as care
fully as any astronomer. He determines the time for
the beginning of each ceremony or important event
in the life of the pueblo, such as corn planting, by the
rising or setting of the sun behind a certain peak or
notch in the marvelous mountain profile on the eastern
and western horizons. These profiles are known to
him as we know the figures on a watch face. Along